


Emotional Support Witcher

by poselikeateam



Series: Vampire Bards (and the Witchers Who Love Them) [9]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Anxiety Disorder, Crack Treated Seriously, Emotionally Competent Lambert (The Witcher), Fluff, Fluff and Crack, Fluff without Plot, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Meditation, Mental Health Issues, POV Valdo Marx, Protective Lambert (The Witcher), References to Depression, Short & Sweet, Soft Lambert (The Witcher)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 20:02:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30144864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poselikeateam/pseuds/poselikeateam
Summary: Valdo Marx is not the best at regulating or dealing with his own emotions, when they become too intense. Lambert helps, with his breathing exercises and his very presence. Is it so wrong for a bard to need a little emotional support?
Relationships: Lambert/Valdo Marx
Series: Vampire Bards (and the Witchers Who Love Them) [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1892647
Comments: 5
Kudos: 24





	Emotional Support Witcher

Valdo Marx, generally speaking, tries to stay out of trouble. At the very least, he tries to stay out of any significant trouble. Before meeting a certain witcher, he would do nothing more than what he had to. The tedium of his routine was broken by nothing, and he was going through the motions for decades, but it kept him occupied. It was better than nothing.

The problem, now, is that he has rediscovered his passions. He is no longer living simply because he has no other option. Everything about his life seems to have changed now that he’s got Lambert in it. He doesn’t want to fall back on the old cliché about redheads being hot-headed and temperamental, but… _Honestly!_ Lambert hardly does himself any favours, and Valdo is starting to think that this particular stereotype exists for a reason. 

Hells, the reason is probably Lambert.

At any rate, Valdo finds Lambert’s general intensity rather infectious. He’s drawn to the other man like a moth to a flame (and _no_ , that is _not_ a pun about his hair) and he finds himself warmed by Lambert’s presence in a way that is almost overwhelming. He is in love, of course, though neither of them ever says it.

Valdo has his highs and his lows, his good days and his bad. Everyone does, but his are so much more intense, more dramatic. Lambert, with his breathing exercises and his bad jokes, helps to keep him grounded. Lambert brings him down from his soaring highs, when everything is so much that he has to let it out through his skin; and helps to pull him from his rock-bottom lows, when nothing feels worth doing and he can barely get out of his bedroll. It’s not like those are his only two states of being, his only frames of mind; if anything, it’s far more usual for him to be somewhere in the middle, more or less normal. Still, his witcher makes it all so much easier to deal with.

That’s why Valdo has started bringing Lambert along to his performances. Not all the time, mind — the witcher still has his, well, _witchering_ to do, and they need time apart like any couple — but when Valdo starts to feel that itch in the back of his mind that he has long known as a precursor to one of his episodes, it’s prudent to have Lambert around. 

Tonight, for example, he’d been hired to play at the betrothal of some noble’s son. The father, apparently, wants to impress the family the son is marrying into with his wealth. It’s a tale as old as time, and a job Valdo has done hundreds of times at least. However, his mind hardly cares about his work schedule. He’s jittery, he’s on edge, he needs distracted. There are no beasties to tussle with — at least, none anyone is paying for — and so Lambert is free for the evening. He’s well-dressed and (at least visibly) unarmed, so Valdo is relatively confident that he won’t be denied a plus-one. That is, of course, until they actually try to enter.

“Hold on,” the guard says sternly. Valdo is sure that it’s meant to be menacing, but he’s hardly intimidated. 

“What seems to be the problem?” he asks coolly. 

“Lord Aemon didn’t say you could bring no witchers.”

A deeply affronted noise escapes Valdo’s lips as he places one hand on his chest, his face a vision of pure outrage. “Sir, I must protest!” he insists. “This is my emotional support witcher!”

The guard looks over at the scowling redhead, and then back at Valdo, incredulous. “What emotions can a witcher support?” he demands. “It ain’t like they feel ‘em.”

It’s hardly the first time he’s had to hear this shit, since he started spending so much time with Lambert (or had Lambert started spending time with him? It’s all rather hazy, really) and yet, it’s never any less infuriating. It’s... well, suffice to say it’s rather difficult to hear that sort of thing thrown at his lover, the person he cares about most in this world—

“C’mon, breathe for me,” Lambert murmurs into his ear, so quietly that the guard surely can’t hear it. His hand is on Valdo’s shoulder, firm and grounding. 

Before they’d met, Valdo hadn’t had a tighter control over his temper so much as he simply had nothing to feel this strongly about. He hadn’t felt much of anything, most of the time. There was often an emptiness where he knew his emotions should be, and he had little to no drive to do much of anything. 

It isn’t as though he no longer feels that way. Sometimes everything is just so much _less_ than it ought to be. It’s just that now, he has a focus. He has something to distract him, and a reason to keep going when he can’t find it in him to do so for himself. 

What’s more, when Valdo gets like this — when his emotions and passions get the better of him, when he’s so incensed he can hardly breathe through the force of it — Lambert distracts him still. Once more he provides a focal point that Valdo didn’t know he quite desperately needed. Lambert has taught him some of that witcher meditation stuff — not anything near the hours-long trances he likes to go into rather than sleeping, for whatever reason, but enough that when everything is too much or not enough, he can ground himself more easily. After all, Lambert is certainly no stranger to flying off the handle, nor to needing to reign himself in from it. 

He’s just finished counting down from ten, and when he looks back at the guard, the man has an astonished sort of look about him. 

“R-right,” the guardsman says, stepping aside to allow them to pass. It’s then that Valdo realises that he has — quite unintentionally — just demonstrated exactly what he had been trying to convey. As they enter the estate together, he hears the man mutter to himself, “Emotional support witcher indeed. Now I’ve seen everything.”


End file.
